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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23070235">Wanting Hands</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strawberry_Sweetheart/pseuds/Strawberry_Sweetheart'>Strawberry_Sweetheart</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stranger Things (TV 2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff, I wrote this at three in the morning and wasn’t but gonna post it, M/M, Soft Steve, but I said fuck it have my trash, just want these boys loving each other, no editing we tired af, soft Billy, this is all over the place, touch of angst, touch starved steve</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:55:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,996</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23070235</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strawberry_Sweetheart/pseuds/Strawberry_Sweetheart</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wants someone to think of him in the latest hours of the night and want so unbearably as he wants, to crave the closeness of shared breaths and the warmth from blankets soaked in the heat that spills from their sleeping forms. It’s more than lust and more than the hunger of his aching teeth that wish to nip at lips; he wishes to hear the words "l love you" spill between them...</p><p>Or</p><p>Steve finds the love he’s been looking for.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>163</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wanting Hands</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Steve wants someone to think of him in the latest hours of the night and want so unbearably as he wants, to crave the closeness of shared breaths and the warmth from blankets soaked in the heat that spills from their sleeping forms. It’s more than lust and more than the hunger of his aching teeth that wish to nip at lips; he wishes to hear the words "l love you" spill between them, pushed out by a lonely tongue and hoping to hear them whispered back in the space shared between two matched hearts.</p><p>At night he lets his shower-damp hair soak through his pillow and dribble drops down his cheeks like the tears he refuses to shed, if only to hold back the hopeless hopefulness of them. He curls into himself, legs tucked into his chest and arms wrapped around his soft stomach, pretending like the coldness that he feels comes from the cool air, like he can warm himself up alone in this big empty space.</p><p>Like if he closes his eyes, the arms he feels aren’t his own, that they’re someone's — someone who holds him tight enough that he could feel them exhale against his back and and fill the air with their scent of company. Someone who would squeeze him just enough that the air in his lung is pushed out until he can’t continue his tearless crying, his shaking pathetically in his craving to have someone, anyone, who would love him.</p><p>Pathetic is the way he presses his back against the wall just to feel something solid against him, feel less vulnerable falling asleep in this foggy darkness that thickens the more he fears until his eyes fill with fright and he can’t see his own hand in front of his face nor the outline of the furniture of his room. </p><p>Pathetic is the stack of pillows, filled and fluffed, as something for him to tuck himself in the middle of and sink in the walls of their feathers, surrounded and hidden and safe but only warmed by his heat and only smelling of himself, only ever himself — himself in this multilayered world, sleeping and awaking alone, opening his eyes to brightness of day and seeing his own eyes staring back at him where they reflect off the vanity mirror across from his bed—</p><p>Pathetic are his daydreams of love that play in his minds eye like a film of secret wishes, replayed over and over again that Steve could recite the words by memory if he wanted to because it’s always the same, they’re always the same: the same scenes of something soft and delicate share between himself and some other nameless person who’s figure is too hazy to make out any details and he can never see their face...</p><p>But he doesn’t need to.</p><p>Because this is love and this person loves him and this person holds him just so, tells him that he’s perfect because he’s not perfect at all, finds his mistakes endearing and has this patience for him that is all he ever asked of anyone... this person is the phantom from his mind that he shares a bed with because there is no one else to.</p><p>—-</p><p>The world changes and it’s not gradual. There is no gentle stream that drifts you along. It’s jarring and abrupt: a meteorite that plunges earth into darkness and starts a new era of life, an ice age that encases the planet in a glass sheet of frost, periods of mass extinctions to make way for new creations, the sudden volcanic eruptions that engulfs everything in its way, ...</p><p>An out-of-town boy with a larger than life attitude.</p><p>—-</p><p>Strange is the way Billy’s persona shoves it’s way into his life, taking up all the empty space there was, sucking it up like a vacuum and filling it with the scent of sea salt instead. The stolen gazes come easy, shameless and increasingly daring. The phantom in Steve’s dreams slowly morphs from it formless features until its Billy that takes up its spot. It’s the thought of Billy’s arms around his waist and Billy loving him, feeling the touch from his fingers, that lull Steve asleep, now.</p><p>So it should have come easier, to accept all those wanted day-dreamed touches, but it wasn’t. Steve wants, more than ever, and now that he had Billy, has him to himself in those stolen moments of time, tucked away where others can’t see, that Steve finds it incredibly hard to let himself have this.</p><p>It’s awkward more than anything.</p><p>Billy purrs low his shameless enticing words and ducks his head into Steve’s neck, and Steve can help the way his shoulders bunch up at the static shock that runs through his skin from the simple brush of lips on his pulse point. He ducks away and Billy frowns, makes off like it doesn’t affect him, to be rejected and denied this tiny form of affection, but Steve sees it. He apologizes and Billy brushes him off, lights a cigarette to give himself something to do other than lingering in this moment of insecurity.</p><p>"Not used to rubbing dicks with another guy, pretty boy?" He says through an exhale of smoke.</p><p><em>Not used to this in general,</em> he thinks. He was at some point, long before Billy showed up and he was someone who knew how to please, how to work his hands down someone’s body and accept all that they would give him. Things used to be easier.</p><p>"Not too late to go chasing pussy again." Billy isn’t looking at him, instead looks at the smoke spill out the rolled down window of the Camaro and disappear into the night air. His voice is a low growl, almost muttered, and Steve’s chest aches at the hurt hidden in them despite Billy’s vulgarity. Steve leans over the into Billy’s space, the seatbelt tugging uncomfortably at his waist, and tests with fingers running down Billy’s hand.</p><p>"Want this," he rubs away at the tension in Billy’s hand, "want you. Just don’t know how to let myself have this."</p><p>It’s a bit too honest, a bit to vulnerable for such a new forming intimacy, barely not-strangers, but he’s rewarded when Billy’s hand turns palm up to grasp at Steve’s hand, fingers interlocked. The same static shock gives his heart a kick.</p><p>"Don’t worry, pretty boy. I’ll show just how okay <em>this</em> is." Billy’s smile is a million watt and his tongue pink as it runs over teeth.</p><p>Steve didn’t mean them, didn’t mean their relationship as guys in a small town, but it seems better to let Billy think that’s what he meant. Somehow, admitting that Steve has a problem accepting love despite craving it every silent night seems less pathetic.</p><p>Of course half-lies never last. They go slow. Steve thinks it’s more for his own sake than Billy’s, because Billy is patient with him, maybe because he thinks it’s Steve first experience with a guy that makes him so skittish. But after a month of talking, sharing space in one car and filling their lungs with the same smoke, Steve has the house to himself.</p><p>Himself and Billy.</p><p>It means that here, there is no quick touches and brushed shoulders in the hallway, no startled pauses when headlights pass by where they’re tucked away on the side of the road. It means that there’s safe to linger into other.</p><p>Steve sits on the couch with his textbook opened face down on his stomach, his hands tugging at his hair and eyes shut with frustration. He can almost hear Billy roll his eyes along with the scoff he lets out at Steve’s tantrum. He feels the weight of his book lifted off, hears it land with a heavy stump on the coffee table in front of him. More than that, he feels Billy rest his weight on top of him, laying between his legs. Billy’s facial hair itches where he presses his lips along his neck and runs his tongue up towards his ear.</p><p>"Think this is the perfect time for a break from math, don’t ya think? What do ya say we move on to anatomy instead?" His words and hands tease. Billy likes over the top pickup lines and if Steve wasn’t so focused on the way a hand cradles the back of his head while another slips under his shirt, it would have gotten a laugh out of him. As it is, though, this is the longest they’ve been this close to each other and the weight of another person feels so good. Steve feels like the longer he’s held the more he’ll far apart.</p><p>Steve’s whole body stiffens like a board. "Steve? Is this okay?"</p><p>He’s not proud of the following choked sob nor the way his body trembles in the effort to keep himself together. He shakes his head vigorously, hides his scrunched up sobbing mess of a face behind his hands. "I’m sorry," he says because he knows Billy and Billy doesn’t know how to do feelings and crying and all that soft gooey shit — he could only imagine how hilarious Billy’s face must be, terrified in unknown territory — but he can’t bring himself to look at him. Instead, he asks him to hold him, please.</p><p>He falls asleep exhausted in his arms.</p><p>Billy never asked what was wrong, seemed to be able to on piece what’s going on all on his own, and for that Steve is grateful because he would know how to put it in words even if he did ask. Billy is more persistent. When Steve curls into himself when Billy touches him, he just stills his movements, lets Steve adjust and uncurl himself from his little ball of armor, before continuing on to drag him into his space.</p><p>Eventually, he gets used to this. His skin becomes less ticklish, less sensitive. He shivers less at night, wallows less is silence. Being touched feels like being fed, it leaves him content and sated, like the feeling of a full stomach after a big dinner, ready to nap for hours.</p><p>—-</p><p>Sometimes he thinks he never loved Nancy at all.</p><p>He thinks: what if he’d gotten so completely lost in his loneliness and want that he let himself believe that his infatuation with being loved became a replacement for the feeling of being <em>in</em> love, that he’d never actually felt love as something honest true for one person more than just the promise that this person will touch him, offer him their company.</p><p>He thinks: what if he was never in love with Nancy all, just in love the thought of being someone’s and Nancy happened to be the first to offer him that.</p><p>That’s what runs through his head, filling his thoughts with clouds of worry so thick that it makes its way down his throat and fills his mouth with cotton. Because history has a cruel habit of repeating itself and he finds himself stuck analyzing every aspect of his previous relationship now that he found himself in a new one.</p><p>Does he love this person, or does he love not being alone.</p><p>But the way Billy holds his hand is different. His hands are rough and warm and that warmth somehow makes it’s way up his fingers and arms, under his skin, and into his stuttering heart. And his heart fills his cheeks with a deep blushed red. His touch is different, it must be, because even long after he’s let go, Steve feels that warmth persist in his chest. It comes back with every thought of Billy, even if it’s as simple and small the thought of blue eyes.</p><p>That’s never happened before; it’s never been that Steve could sit alone in the dark and not feel alone at all, not with the thought of Billy keeping him company. With Nancy, it’s always been that sinking dread that the moment she went home, he’d be left cold again. Sometimes, no matter how closely pressed their bodies were, there was still that frigid lonesomeness frosted under his nails. Alone with company was the worst feeling of alone — alienated, isolated, among a crowd.</p><p>But not with Billy, not with Billy’s magnetic pull that threatened consume him whole, like if Steve let him, Billy would keep him under his skin because he’s his and, God, does it feel so good to belong to someone in a way he never felt before. He’d let him, too — let Billy entrap him, curl around him and restrict him like a starving python, and eat him up whole just to be <em>kept</em>.</p><p>Sometimes, though, he can’t help but still wonder. He wonders if he’s convinced himself that this is love, just like with Nancy, if he’s strung Billy along unknowingly with his lies. Then, each and every time, his heart gives a kick and palms spark with the phantom of Billy’s presence. How could this be anything but love, when a simple kiss can leave Steve feeling full like no other. It’s not the kiss that flutters his heart, it’s the man to which those lips belong to.</p><p>He feels seen, with Billy. Like he’s not trapped in a world alone because Billy makes the effort to see what he sees. </p><p>Steve can say, “the sky is red.”</p><p>And Nancy would respond, “You’re an idiot Steve Harrington,” with an exasperated, but fond, tone. “It’s blue.” </p><p>But Billy would ask him instead, “Why do you say that, pretty boy?” </p><p>And Steve would take his hand, let him into his world, and point up at the setting sun that blankets dusk with clouds of deep red and orange. </p><p>Steve could say the sky is red and Billy would make the effort to understand.</p><p>He’s never had that before.<br/>
——</p><p>"You know," Billy says when Steve licks at his fingertips and makes away with the popcorn that was held between them, "I never thought you’d be like this."</p><p>Steve offers an inquisitive hum, half too lost in the pleasantness of the evening to really be all present. He opens his mouth, silently begging, and Billy chuckles, lets Steve eat more caramel popcorn from his fingers.</p><p>"Just, you know, the notorious King Steve: nothing more than a lap dog." Billy’s hand pinches his hip and Steve squirms in place where he’s very much in Billy’s lap.</p><p>"Careful, I bite." He dazzles a charming smile of his own, reminiscent of his years on the throne. He nips at Billy’s lips, bruising the flesh between teeth until Billy holds him still in his lap with hands on his hips, deepens the kiss into something more complete.</p><p>"Sure you do." He grip at his thighs before tugging at Steve’s hair, hums in mock deep thought. "But it’s more... like a teething puppy."</p><p>"You saying I can’t win in a fight against you?"</p><p>"Oh puppy, I know you can’t."</p><p>They tumble out the couch in a mess of limbs, tugging at clothes and trying to wrestle the other under them. Steve likes that Billy looks at him with this softness in his eyes. The force in his hands is somehow gentle despite the way it’s bruising. He likes that Billy doesn’t know how hard he can swing a bat, doesn’t know how the smell of monstrous burning flesh can fill his senses. Billy doesn’t know the Steve that’s been deathly afraid and that keeps the other world away, like it doesn’t exist while Billy’s here. He’s the gate that keeps not-so-old memories under lock and key.</p><p>It makes him feel like a time before flowers had a face full of teeth that bloomed in the night, like a time when flowers were only soft and fragile and easily crushed beneath his feet.</p><p>——</p><p>Steve learns that there are differences when it comes to fearing touch. Steve fears that he’ll get used to it, that he’ll be left wanting when it stops. Billy, he learns, fears that it’ll bring hurt.</p><p>He shows up with bruises, sometimes. They litter his back in odd lines, spreads across his ribs. It’s not often, but it’s enough that Steve knows they’ve can’t be from a fight. Billy will show up at his door with a red cheek, and even though it fades and doesn’t leave a bruise like countless others, it’s enough for Steve to start putting together puzzle pieces. </p><p>Billy will flinch if he moves too fast. He’ll startle away if Steve touches his arm when his eyes seem a million miles away. He covers his fright and his marks with a sure bravado, “You worried about me, pretty boy?” And scoffs when Steve responds with a yes, of course he’s worried. But Billy was patient with him and Steve can be patient in return, however long it takes until Billy knows that Steve won’t hurt him, won’t lash out when he’s angry. </p><p>They’re working through things, slow and steady, until they find how they can fit perfectly in one another. </p><p>——</p><p>When Steve kisses Billy, if not desperate, it’s soft and Billy hasn’t had much softness in his life. It is the complete opposite of the way Billy kisses him, the way he does anything. Billy is rough and confident, the way Steve needs it to be, unhesitant and leaving no room for what-if questions. There is no “what if he doesn’t love me” when he’s being kissed like that.</p><p>The extra pillows are thrown next to the bed to make room for two sleeping bodies. Steve smiles in his sleep, mind at peace. He knows he’ll wake up to the scent of Billy clinging to the sheets, mingling among the smell of detergent. He knows that when he opens his eyes in the morning it will be to the image of Billy sleeping next to him, blonde hair slighted matted and frizzy with sleep. </p><p>And maybe they’re too young, their relationship too new, but Steve feels like he’ll never have to wake up alone again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Wasn’t kidding when I said this shit is all over the place, there’s like no plot or point im sorry. </p><p>Don’t exactly know what this.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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